A waning number of high school graduates from the Midwest is sparking a college hunt for freshman applicants, with the decline being felt as far away as Harvard and Emory universities.

The drop is the leading edge of a demographic change that is likely to ease competition for slots at selective schools and is already prompting concern among Midwestern colleges.

“You can’t create 18-year-olds in a lab,” said Brian Prescott, director of policy research at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education in Boulder, Colorado. “Enrollment managers are facing an awful lot of pressure that they can’t do much about.”

This scholarship is great, but there are a couple of other things we should keep in mind. It’s in the University’s interest to increase enrollment from out-of-state and international students, and yet these students currently make up only 14 percent of the overall student population. The higher tuition from out-of-state students will bring more money to Rutgers, and there could be more of a focus on this oft-forgotten part of the overall student population to increase their enrollment.

Demographically, New Jersey can't support Rutgers. Rutgers must import freshman (i.e. export higher education). MOOCs are a good way to do that and will allow Rutgers to collect more tuition dollars.

The departure of Florida State University President Eric Barron to join the Penn State University system was met with much surprise, as was the leaving of former State University System Chancellor Frank Brogan, also recently migrating to Pennsylvania, and before him the move of John Cavanaugh from the University of West Florida to this same northern state. We seem to have a budding employment pipeline that runs from Florida to Pennsylvania.

Most would wonder why in the world Pennsylvania would serve as a magnet for Florida-based talent. Is it the severe budget cuts that have occurred there, leaving state funding for their institutions at “1995 levels,” as one university president described it? Is it the record snowfall and cold weather that are so appealing? Is it the statewide demographic challenges of having fewer college-bound residents — added to the practice of neighboring states offering discounted tuition for Pennsylvania students?

Higher education talent is agglomerating in Pennsylvania because institutions there lead the way in exporting services.

Between 2007 and 2011, Chicago and its immediate suburbs also ended up with about 10,000 fewer residents with a bachelor's degree or higher, even after accounting for new arrivals, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's first attempt to track population shifts by income and education at the county level.

In recent years, local officials and real estate developers have touted a resurgence in young tech workers and affluent empty-nesters revitalizing the city's core. Yet those trends are seemingly being overshadowed by more powerful factors, as other parts of the city and close-in suburbs send even larger numbers of prosperous, college-educated people to DuPage County and beyond.

“Wow, the movement back to the center that a lot of urban planners in the region were hoping for isn't borne out by this data,” says Rich Greene, associate professor of geography and urban studies at Northern Illinois University. “It's counter to what we've all been reading about.”

The census estimates show that Cuyahoga County, where Cleveland is located, gained about 3,450 more highly educated people than it lost. An estimated 25,450 adults with at least some college experience came to the county while about 22,000 left.

Granted, Cleveland is trying to catch up to Chicago's lofty perch now in decline. Chicago is betting on the converging Innovation Economy. More places will compete for a shrinking pool of talent. Cleveland is betting on the diverging Legacy Economy. Chicago does have great legacy assets (i.e. institutions of higher education producing world class talent), but seems to be ignoring them at its own peril.

Liam Boogar, a Silicon Valley native who three years ago set up Rude Baguette, a start-up blog based in Paris, says French tech entrepreneurs have been going to California since the 1980s. "They have probably done more good than harm to France. French engineers have a great reputation in the Valley, which France has underleveraged," he says.

So much effort is wasted on retention. Better leverage existing outflows and inflows of talent. Above all, remember people develop, not places.

“In the boom years after the ’90s, all our policies were designed to attract labour,” says Catarina Reis Oliveira, the head of the research department of the Portuguese government’s High Commission for Immigration. “But since the crisis, we’re looking at immigrants as a source of employment – as people to create jobs.”

Postscript: What's driving the economic turnaround in Pittsburgh? One theory is that the Innovation Economy is converging. The group of metro winners is growing. Silicon Valley's dominance is eroding. Another possible theory is the divergence of the Legacy Economy. A new set of winners are forming with the rise of the next economic epoch in the wake of the Innovation Economy's decline. I think the Innovation Economy is converging in Cleveland. Meanwhile, the Legacy Economy is converging in Pittsburgh. Thus, the disparity between brain hubs.

Postscript: Why retaining talent (plugging the brain drain) is bad for the economy isn't rocket science. An economic cluster is useless if talent doesn't flow in and out of the businesses within that cluster. Inter-firm talent migration is crucial for innovation. Greater density won't help.

Postscript: I've been working up to this post for about two years. I termed the successor of the "Innovation Economy" (as Enrico Moretti called it in "New Geography of Jobs") as the "Talent Economy". I'm dumping the term. The "Legacy Economy" is already diverging while the Innovation Economy continues its decline. Meaning, Pittsburgh is not so much catching up to Silicon Valley as it is replace it on a global scale.

Postscript: Pittsburghese, a product of decades of parochial attitudes built by an absence of in-migration, helps newcomers connect with locals. Conversely, Pittsburghers cling to their Rust Belt roots by wrapping Yinzers in nostalgia. It's an affluent NOVA gang sign. The Yinzerati run the world.

Jennifer Kelly used to take refuge in her $1,750-a-month, two-bedroom downtown Campbell home.

The former tech sales manager, who made up to $180,000 a year working at startups during the last decade, had a routine of working out on her home Stairmaster or taking joy rides in her sports car to relax after 14-hour workdays.

Now Kelly, who didn’t want her real name used in this story, is stringing together short-term contract work and sleeping in an aging SUV that she parks on a rotating slate of dead-end streets in Silicon Valley.

“Professionally, I’m at director level,” she said. “I had a safety net.”

Two neurosurgeries and a layoff, exacerbated by rising housing costs, have made Kelly, 51, a personification of Silicon Valley’s affordable housing crisis. The region’s high cost of housing affects residents at all pay grades with varying degrees of severity. It also hamstrings employers looking to lure talent to one of the country’s most expensive real estate markets.

Silicon Valley's regional economy is imploding, collapsing under the weight of its own success. Detroit suffered the same fate, but during a different economic epoch. I honestly don't think the Detroit comparison is hyperbole.